City sets 300,000 target for jobs

Oct 21 2007 by David Bartlett, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL was last night set a target of creating 74,000 jobs in the next decade to catch up with neighbours Manchester.

The challenge the city faces is to increase job creation by 5% a year until 2017, in order to reach the 300,000 employment mark.

Business Liverpool, one of the city’s quangos charged with promoting investment, says the number of jobs has only increased by 1.4% annually over the past five years.

Chief executive Mike Taylor last night admitted it was a “tall order” to increase the number of jobs by around a third, from its current base of 220,000. But the city’s economic development leader, Cllr Flo Clucas, said it was vital the gap was bridged if Liverpool was to become “the global city that we are in name, in economic performance”.

Business leaders agreed the target was a worthwhile aspiration, but opinion was divided over whether it was realistic to meet a 5% annual growth.

It comes as Downtown Business in Liverpool is poised to launch a campaign called Liverpool Local, to improve the city jobs market by attracting employers and ensuring the workforce can match the demand for skills.

Earlier this week, a report revealed the cost of ill health linked to deprivation and unemployment is costing the Merseyside economy £2bn a year.

Manchester and Liverpool have comparable populations of around 440,000.

But because Liverpool fared worse when jobs were being shed from the region in the 1960s and ’70s, it now lags behind its neighbour at the other end of the M62.

Business Liverpool will be swallowed up when it merges with Liverpool Land and Liverpool Vision next year to become a new super quango called Liverpool plc.

Mr Taylor said: “We are keeping pace, but to catch up we need to increase jobs by 5% a year and it’s going to take 10 years.

“It’s a tall order, but we are not standing still and have got a number of key assets coming on stream.”

He said 5,000 jobs would be created at Grosvenor’s Liverpool One shopping development, which opens next year, and the amount of office space in the city was set to double to 2m sq ft.

“It’s one of the reasons we are creating Liverpool plc. It’s about accelerating that growth. The indicators are good, but we have got to accept that it is a big challenge.”

Frank McKenna, chairman of Downtown Liverpool In Business, said: “I think it is a realistic target. For the first time in modern times, Liverpool has got an economic advantage over its competitors.”

He said the city was on the brink of reaping the benefits of the investment in infrastructure of the past few years.

He added that the Liverpool Local campaign would aim to ensure home grown companies were given a level playing field when competing for work from public sector agencies.

It will also aim to find out from training agencies what skills are needed to enable people from the area to be able to get jobs.

Cllr Clucas said that, of the 55,000 jobs created on Merseyside since 2000, the majority were in Liverpool.

“Although it is an ambitious target, we should not shy away from it,” she said.

“Manchester’s growth is limited by its geographical location, whereas we have more room for expansion and development.”

She said the University of Liverpool science campus had the capability of fostering 4,500 new jobs and with developments like the new cruise line terminal the city could become a genuine maritime hub over the next 20 years.

She said Liverpool’s creative industries would also stand to benefit greatly from the relocation of a number of BBC departments to Salford by 2010.

Liverpool Chamber of Commerce said business growth needed to increase further to reverse the decline that the city saw in the 1970s and ’80s.

Maresa Malloy, head of policy and information at Liverpool Chamber of Commerce said: “Overall, the news is good, the recently-opened Primark store created 800 new jobs, while the complete rebuilding and upgrading of the retail heart of the city centre, will bring hundreds more permanent jobs to Liverpool in the coming year.”

She said there had also been a rise in the number of professional jobs being attracted with the relocation and expansion of a number of law firms and stockbrokers.

“Financial services have now become one of the fastest growing business sectors in Liverpool.”

Established players such as QVC and Bertelsmann recruited an additional 900 employees between them in the past year.

LCC chief executive Jack Stopforth believes the target is unrealistic but still says it is a worthwhile aspiration. He said Merseysiders should not be obsessed by what was happening in Manchester.

He warned proposed increases to Capital Gains Tax threatened to hit the investments of those who had built up small businesses.

And he said the mooted supplementary business rates could deter entrepreneurship at a crucial time when Liverpool has finally moved away from using public funding to support projects.

But Deputy Labour leader Cllr Paul Brant said the council needed to work harder to make the most of millions of pounds of government and European funding.

“The city must improve its educational attainment. Business requires well-educated school leavers, and teaching business skills at school would help to increase Liverpool’s low rate of business start-ups.”

davidbartlett